Back in the 1950s, the famed author of ‘On the Road’ stopped his travels to spend some time with Neal Cassady’s family in the Santa Clara Valley.
Jack Kerouac with fellow Beat traveler Al Hinkle.
John Cassady is the son of Neal, a key figure of Beat Generation lore, and the model for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. John Cassady reminisces a little about Neal’s longtime friend Jack in a short autobiographical piece in the Los Gatan, the first part of which is set during John’s boyhood.
In those days, Jack was frequently visiting his pals Neal and Carolyn Cassady at their place in Monte Sereno. Kerouac was, John explains, trying to harden himself up for the mountaintop living he’d later write about in The Dharma Bums (1958) by sleeping under the stars in the Cassady’s backyard. (John Cassady calls this Kerouac’s “Gary Snyder outdoorsy phase … he had his red wine and would read and write into the wee hours. My sisters and I would run out before school and jump on Uncle Jack’s chest.”)
Almost everything’s changed in the Valley in the subsequent two-thirds of a century. John Cassady returned for a visit to the backyard of the grander house that replaced his since-demolished family home. There, John Cassady made a startling little discovery.
Read Jack Kerouac left his light in Los Gatos on LosGatan.com.
(If you’re curious about the man pictured above with Kerouac, find out more in Geoffrey Dunn’s essay on the late Al Hinkle on GoodTimes.sc.)
